New Jersey company Legend Biotech has partnered with San Francisco, California-based firm Multiply Labs to use the latter company’s robotic system during cell-therapy production.  

Multiply Labs will build robotic systems to automate the manufacturing of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapies, while Legend will develop and commercialize them against life-threatening diseases.  

Multiply Labs automates instruments already used for cell-therapy manufacturing, eliminating the need for manufacturers to adopt new instruments. This collaboration gives Legend Biotech priority access to Multiply Labs’ robotic technologies.  

A spokesperson for Multiply Labs told us that the company’s robotic arms can be programmed to work in the needed sequencing required by each individual manufacturer. 

Fred Parietti, CEO, Multiply Labs stressed the value of using robotics and automation in a conversation with BioProcess Insider. “Human errors are the most significant cause of contamination in cell therapies. Given how long it takes and how much it costs to produce just one cell therapy product, contamination is a major concern for manufacturers.”   

“Cell therapies are very expensive to manufacture and require highly skilled labor. In fact, as much as 50% of manufacturing costs stem from labor-intensive manual processes and a shortage of skilled workers. This adds to the prohibitively high price of cell therapies today. Our automation approach can help significantly reduce costs while ensuring statistically equivalent outcomes to traditional manual processes.” 

“This is why we’ve created a robotic system,” Parietti continued, “that can operate market-leading GMP instruments that are already being used for cell and gene therapy manufacturing today. This enables plug-and-play-like capabilities, faster automation timelines, and fewer regulatory barriers.” 

In February 2024, Multiply Labs partnered with Thermo Fisher to further automate the cell-therapy production process by integrating robotic technology with Thermo Fisher’s Heracell VIOS automated access carbon di oxide incubator, Gibco Cell Therapy Systems (CTS), and Rotea Counterflow Centrifugation System.

That collaboration was followed by a partnership with Stanford Laboratory for Cell and Gene Medicine (LCGM) in April 2024. Under the terms of the partnership, Multiply Labs agreed to use its robotics technology to operate instruments, consumables, and reagents for cell and gene therapy (CGT) manufacturing.